Artist Ikuo Hirayama was born here in Setoda in 1930(-2009) and raised amid its luxuriant environment of greenery and blue waters in the Inland Sea.

The mysterious flow of the currents and the deep the colors of the sea left a profound impression on the boy Hirayama, nurturing the fledgling artist's sensitivities.

But as a junior high school student in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Hirayama was a victim of the atomic bombing of that city, and suffered from chronic after-effects of radiation.

Through his experience, Hiryama came to paint a series of works portraying his prayers for peace, including his famous "Bukkyo Denrai.(仏教伝来)"

In his pursuit of the origins of our culture, and especially of the transmission of Buddhism, Hirayama set off many times on journeys along the Silk Road, the route that played such a crucial role in early cultural exchanges between East and West.His travels tracing the path taken by the Chinese monk Xuan Sang(玄奘)-know in Japanese as Genjyo Sanzo(玄奘三蔵)-who carried sutras from India over the Silk Road and eventually to Japan, have covered a total of about 350,000 kilometers.

In addition to Hirayama's artistic achievements, he maintained a high profile in working to preserve the world's cultural heritage, a concept he called the Red Cross Spirit for Cultural Heritage. The motivating force behind this was Hirayama's desire for world for peace.

Exhibited in this museum are displays tracking Hirayama's life and dramatizing the essence of his artistic career, ranging from rare items he painted as a child, to sketches and drawings, to his later years works.

Hirayama said that his roots came deep into the environment of the Inland Sea area, and we hope in part to explain how a great artist was born in Setoda and how he developed out of that beginning.

We would also like to take the opportunity of the connection by bridge of Setoda to the mainland to strengthen our associations with our neighboring communities. And we sincerely hope that we are able in some small way to contribute to Japanese culture and art.

Moreover, we sincerely hope that this museum will serve to endow sensitivity and creative potential among those of the younger generation, who must be responsible for taking the next steps in our history.

About Ikuo Hirayama

Hirayama Ikuo is celebrated artist working in the genre of Nihon-ga, or traditional Japanese painting, and his works on the Silk Road and on mankind's outstanding cultural monuments have made his name well-known far beyond his native shores.

Born on a small island in the Inland Sea, Hirayama's childhood years were almost idyllic, until the outbreak of World War Ⅱ brought him face-to-face with a grimmer reality. While still a schoolboy, he was called up in 1945 to work at a munitions depot in Hiroshima, and he narrowly escaped death when the atomic bomb was dropped. The after-effects of the radiation sickness he suffered were to plague him throughout his early career.

It was this struggle with ill-health that led him to depict Buddhist themes in his painting, and these works not only brought him much public acclaim but also sparked his interest in Silk Road and the ancient civilizations found there. Thus, from the mid-1960s. Hirayama began almost annual pilgrimages to sites along the entire length of the Silk Road, from Turkey to the remote desert regions of China, sketching the people and scenes he encountered.

On these visits he was saddened by the state of disrepair of many of the ancient monuments, and this fired his determination to help resort and preserve these treasures of civilization. Despite the heavy demands of his official position as the president of the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, he worked tirelessly for this cause, setting up organizations to save such sites as the ThousandBuddhaCaves at Dunhuang, China, and the Buddhist complex at Angkor, Cambodia, even donating money from the sales of his paintings. His contributions in this filed and to international culture exchange in general have been recognized by several governments, and in 1988 he was made UNESCO's first Goodwill Ambassador from Japan.